🚀 go-pugleaf

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
: Concerning Basque, isn't there also some combination of words that
: are more and more commonly used together to indicate gender in third
: person singular? I can imagine that in the long run, this becomes
: very practical and that such a 'feature' is natural, just like it
: has shown that a common "you" for both singular and plural in English
: not is very natural/unpractical.
:
: Making differences between he and she, I think, ought to make the
: sentences shorter because you don't have to describe an otherwise
: sometimes unnecessary context to let your full message get through.

Well, I disagree absolutely. Why should we state such a difference?
Why could it be a 'natural feature'? I've never felt the necessity
of stating the third person gender in Basque as I've never needed
to state his/her age or hair colour. When the gender means something
in the speech we can stress it in any other way not related with the
morfological building of the words.

Besides, in languages from the same root, the behaviour is different
too. Thus, you need to specify the subject in French, but not in
Spanish; even, in Spanish, the common rule is not to indicate it
explicitly. And the pronoun itself have not a clear etymology as
a personal pronoun, because is likely to be a simpification from
the demonstrative form "aqu)el, aqu)ella", like "aqu)este, aqu)esta".

So, there is no general problems for languages, as there is not
identical solutions to the same problems in different languages.
I don't think comparing languages could be a good method to solve
suposedly pitfalls. For instance, in Basque we have a three form
set for each verbal form: one for politeness, one for familiar
speaking with men (and with oneself) and one for familiar speaking
with women. When speaking Spanish I've never noticed any lacking of
accuracy. Same thing in other languages: in Swahili there is
no gender difference but noun class difference; there is a class
for people and some animals, another for things, another for plants,
another for abstract nouns, another for places and a couple of class
where any other noun can be placed. When I switch from Swahili
to the other languages I speak, I forget all the noun class
stuff and concentrate myself in the features of that one.

I think Mikel said it in the best way:

>>The reason is that we think and express
>>ourselves in terms of the language at hand and we construct sentences
>>with the appropriate context that contains all the information we
>>wish to convey.

: /Malte Lewan/not speaking Basque

F.J.Herrera / vax242@tid.es / not speaking English :-)